Five Tools

giacometti: "figurine dans une boite entre deux boites qui sont des maisons"

when i can't deal with my mp3 player, even, as happened this morning -- i have THREE new tools in the distraction/mindLESSness effort.  that's a total, when all is well, of FOUR tools.

if i can read, i now have [ONE] oppen's COMPLETE work, and [TWO] oxford's collection of american poetry. the other big "if," and it's sucky, is that these books are large and heavy, and at the times i need them the most, too large and heavy to be of use.  that's how poetry gets to kick a person in the ass.

if my hands can grip the the little non-skid plastic non-skid plastic corner stick-ons decorating the underside of my workaholic laptop, then if the index and thumb can toss it onto the pillow awaitin' on my lap, then we can try to get to youtube and [THREE] wallow and smile with maru, and now, with and at, maru&hana.

[FOUR] there is almost always an *actual* cat, always there has almost always been a cat, but it's different now.  they take turns checking.  i've begun wearing hoodies to bed, with the hood up. in the beginning, the hoodie went up to aid in sliding up in the hearsepital bed without also dragging hair and whatever sexpot top i sported. then the hoodie stayed up to protect the mp3 wiring, then to keep my head warm, then because it comforted me, and always because it kept my unkempt hair more kempt.  so, anyway, the cats, in turn, snuffle at the perceived entrance to my face, and issue their particular greeting.  buddy, small melodious things. marmy, *::ack::*::ack::* + apologetic purrrrr and approximated headbutt.  dobby, a loud, unmodulated, caricature of a MEOW. dobby always scares me to death, if i have actually achieved sleep, and i squint to perceive a worried pink nose. yes, a nose can worry.  there's more, lots more, to number FOUR, but i'll spare you.

the mp3 player senses change.  it first died and required resuscitation. then twice, then, after a third, almost mechanical, heartless lazarus play, one night found me cursing new curses. "not that song again, no, not again, did we not do that song just, what? twenty songs ago?"

somehow, we were down to 22 songs, and, the odd thing? they were all of an era. go ahead: shiver the creepy-shiver, all at once, as one. here, this will help you pull it off: melanie, candles in the rain. 

ohh, emm, gee, mine people, ohh, emm, gee.

Lay down, lay down, lay it all down

Let your white birds smile up

At the ones who stand and frown

Lay down, lay down, lay it all down

Let your white birds smile up

At the ones who stand and frown.

We were so close, there was no room

We bled inside each other's wounds

We all had caught the same disease

And we all sang the songs of peace.

Lay down, lay down, lay it all down

Let your white birds smile up

At the ones who stand and frown

Lay down, lay down, lay it all down

Let your white birds smile up

At the ones who stand and frown.

So raise the candles high

'Cause if you don't we could stay black against the night

Oh raise them higher again

And if you do we could stay dry against the rain.

so the mp3 now has been reformatted.  and no, i had not been so organized as to save its last incarnation, as each incarnation was a work in progress. which is why we all come back as worms -- don't be fooled.  the universe doesn't save or back up its work, either, not believing it can make a mistake, being the universe 'n all. did i tell you what a god-awful anthropomorphic nitwit i am, and always have been, will be?

so the reloading goes well, and is a pleasure.  

we reloaded less than two-thirds of the former songs, adding a few new ones, and a few that had been removed in fits of pique.  we had a bad day yesterday, breaking beneath the weight of physical, but not mental or emotional, pain.  the perfect day for the betas (in alpha testing, a.b.o.u.t. ready for launch!) ONE, TWO, THREE and FOUR.

don't be jealous because i have five tools in my toolbox.  be happy for me.  and get me a perfect mp3 player, with seamless wireless paid for by, i dunno, you, and enough memory to hold the impossible recordings of all oppen's work as read by oppen, live, before a live audience, and the bazillion poets the oxford edition included, all recorded live, audiences optional.  no podcasts, no video, just the voices. maru and maru&hana are a whole, are "as is." the actual cats stay as they are, too, cannot be improved upon, marmy's breath excepted.  

oh, and with time, i'm sorry to break it to you, the various versions of the serenity prayer fail, usually before giacometti, brancusi, duchamp, modigliani, rothko, beckett. you will have your own sacred list.

now, if the hands fail, well, we'll revisit all this.

© 2015 L. Ryan

Retired Educator, Mocked Poetess

REPOST: Because. First published 11 April 2013.

I promised poetry but did not deliver.  You don't understand the trepidation of letting this tender, soft-hearted part of myself be open to ridicule, taunting, and satire!  How the Genetically Indentured Manor Staff thrills at responding to my meekest requests with muttered, "Yeah?  Why don't you go write a poem about it?" 

Even Fred can get nasty.  I showed him one of my best works and he said, "This is why you couldn't help weed the miniature Wimbledon courts?  This is what kept you from leading group therapy for the Crackhead Carnies holed up in the barn?  THIS is why you couldn't be bothered to cook for my Wednesday night dinner with the Militant Existentialist Lesbian Feminists?  And it doesn't even make sense!"

The Castafiore has been my only support.  "Ze poésie, cara mia, it is an art and for ze art, we give our all, we give tout! We give ze everything! Are you going to wear ze rouge pencil skirt and ze frilly white blouse of laces cut down to ze navel of you to ze très extraordinaire mass ce soir?  But then, it is ze soir when ze muse appears, no, so I, la Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore, can wear ze clothings before ze good Abbot Truffatore, n'est-ce pas?  We will pray for ze poésie, for ze breast titty of ze muse to land in your head..."

Abbot Truffatore and Bianca have been meeting for private prayer and, judging from his sweaty red face and mismatched buttons when he leaves, heavy monk boots in hand, some athletic catechism review.  Tonight, he is leading a special mass for the Saint Day of Gemma Galgani, on whom he's had a crush for the last thirty years, and Bianca has become a green-eyed and now red pencil skirted demon with a deep v-neck lacy frill top.  She may not break out in stigmata every Thursday, but everything else about my girl is so totally venerable and serene.

St. Gemma Galgani

I shall take a page from good Gemma Galgani's book and suffer the jealousies and pettiness thrown at me over my blessed poetry and suffer these "heartaches in reparation, remembering that Our Lord Himself had been misunderstood and ridiculed."

Ahem.  Cough.  My first selection is a cute little ditty, meant to liven up the day and inspire all with my usual inimitable hope and optimism.  Do not be alarmed if you are so moved as to be unable to speak after the first dozen readings or so.  This is a perfectly natural response to poetry of this caliber. Like good Saint Gemma Galgani, you may experience ecstacies and raptures, but be calm.  It passes.

Final Cut 

there is sand between my eye and lid
from crying over nothing, one more dead kid,
pain here, pain there, poor me, while she
becomes green algae.

my legs that just ought to go,
says the do-it-yourself amputation pro,
prod, poke, ponder: it provokes familiar argument,
the age old problem, that old saw.

both legs are off, okay and fine,
and then one arm, a kinder line,
but there's no one for the coup de grâce,
no one to take the last arm off.

-- by Retired Educator, Mocked Poetess

© 2015 L. Ryan

Out of the stinking crypt, he warns: noli me tangere

For a brief period of time, I neglected this blog late last year, and perhaps into the beginning of 2014, largely due to an effort to work on my poetry and increase the length of some of my short fictions to something akin to book length.  Every group is political.  Every group leader, and definitely every group "owner," is charismatic, meaning that relationships too easily dissolve into dichotomies that are known to be false but working out the truth can be just the distraction to drive a working writer away.
So I left, downloading, I thought, all of my work -- in case I wanted to get back to work on any of it, if I ever regained the sang froid and the imagination necessary to such travail. This evening, I received an unexpected email from this writer's site, telling me that one of my poems had received a new comment. No writer of small literature can resist a comment ("maybe it will help me grow..." actually means "maybe someone really liked it!"). The reason I could not recollect the poem was that it was a final volley aimed at a truly scary individual, constantly posing as someone else in private messages, hitting on vulnerable individuals, claiming a mastery of zen, but mocking zen at every opportunity, mocking everyone at every opportunity, until he could not keep track of his games, therefore his game pieces promptly developed a new pastime of biting the gamer on the ass.  This was my chunk of butt on my way out -- and he apparently JUST found it!  Aloeswood was his moniker, hence my addressing "Aloe's Wood."
So it's an ad hominem poem, I am sad to say, and yet -- I like it.  It is, by definition, a fallacy.
But what poem is not?

Out of the stinking crypt, he warns: noli me tangere

Aloe's wood, you forget yourself.

Easy enough to do under

circumstances, bobbing just

under water, long lost

zen,

O!

As an aside -- though I held

an incarnation of you dear --

I also hold the piquant

long steel stylus,

the stylus styled to replace

Jesus' reaching, trembling,

wanting and weak, weak 

hand, the stylus made

for the sticking

into you,

or lamb, or a pigeon's heart,

when I do voodoo kebobs

on the deck on

warm summer nights. 

At the last electric flutter

of the urban bird's misfiring

pump, I squawk this truth:

How much you do hate

the Zen you "study"!

A scholar's pet, you

are:

O!

Which is granting you

a huge mofo of a self-deception,

but you must know I strive

but for peace.  Ho!

[Hiding in my room / safe within my womb...]

I've always loved the brief smack 

of the organ after

Don't talk of love

[organ smack

organ smack]

I've heard the word before; 

It's sleeping in my memory. 

I won't disturb the slumber of feelings that have died. 

If I never loved I never would have cried. 

I am a rock, 

I am an island. 

It's such an insipid song 

and I've heard people

reference its zen while

just a reprobate few of us

hear Buddha's high-

pitched giggle.

She said:

O!

You could not have known

not without hiring

some tired detective,

how dear to me,

academically,

is the Magdalene.

So it's a throw-down, man-boy,

if you can girdle your womb

for the duration.

[I'll be gone in

twenty-nine days:

O!]

The most important words

to pass between them,

midst balm-imbued

greasy hairs waxing

dirty sweat-stinking 

mildly hairy skin

(maybe hairless altogether,

by design or by aesthetic)?

The most important words

hit on by sixteenth, seventeenth

century Italians,

some lesser Dutch

(Who are the Dutch?),

the always overlooked

-- for edginess --

Spaniards, elongated, the spike,

the piercing spine put second

place,

and even later, still, even as tardy

as the nineteenth century,

the Brits, on whom the whole

idea is lost

[You've some Brit in you,

I believe.  Some offshoot,

something?];

All with oiled bristles

painting plump and ivory hands

on a single brazen marble tit

(Courtesans with your selfsame

madly timed grimace

meant to charm:

Twirl and twist the nipple --

O!

Pull it long, taut taut taut,

rub the nub

zenzenzen zoom zoom)

The words that mattered

and summed, that added

surfeit to globs of tint

were noli  me  tangere

O!

The instant zen

of spiritual anatomy.

Author Notes

PHOTO/Painting CREDIT:,  noli me tangere motif in detail by Michelangelo and Pontormo

© 2013 L. Ryan

Pointe Work

       Great by association

I was great once,
by association.
I imagine that I sauntered
and twirled my tossed curls
passing under Sather Gate
with a grand crème and shiny briefcase.

A few nights after The Great Writer
shared his love
for a breakfast waitress,
I rose from our bed in the middle of the night
-- he was not there --

And I did not know where he was.
(Oh, yes, I did.)
My heart was broken so
I was extremely naked
under a thin pink gown.

I ran into the cool night,
the gown my comet tail in solar wind,
and down the street, stopping
on the corner of 59th and Telegraph.
almost the precise border of two towns.

I stood below the red neon cross
that marked that north edge of Oakland,
a mere shimmer of a woman
before the much more truly pink
Memorial Tabernacle Church.

Then running across the street
to the green-slatted bus bench,
I sat, knees folded in my arms,
and waited, we suppose,
for the bus, the every twelve minute bus.

A bus came, stopped,
whisked open its old doors
with a big wavy swoosh and creak,
but I shook my head "no."
The driver shrugged, drove on,
in a blue sweater with leather-patched elbows.

(Another stupid white girl
sitting on a bench,
may as well be naked
in those cheap pink gowns
shred to flimsy filmy pieces
in the street lamp light.
And they all know where he is.)

Humid air from the bay condensed
upon my body, the famous pink gown
stuck to all those moist places
where it shouldn't   And I knew

I had worn out my welcome as the crazy lady
on the green bus bench on the corner
beneath pink stucco and a red neon cross,
that had so many days guided me home. 

(Just hours ago
with an armload of fresh food
and Peet's unground coffee,
blessed by Chez Panisse
and all the makings of gazpacho.)

Packed by dawn,
when he came home,
I had gone.

We did this dance three times,
pretending a pas de deux --
entrée, adagio,
step pas pas step,
coda -- was just a fractured solo.

I did pointe work,
shreds of buffering cotton
following me around
in my affected dancer's stumpy walk,
until I could rise en pointe again,
ferocious tall, ferocious long.

Three times, I came back.
Three times, I left.

Always for his waitresses,
because "they like [my] poetry."
But the last time, the last time,
bloody-toed,
I turned left, for once,
and went west
-- left is always west --
into the hills, up rarefied high,

To Kentucky Avenue,
an ambassador's home,
and rented that room with its rocking chair,
from where, mute,
I could see the reflections
of five counties,
the Golden Gate,
but hear no poetry.

Photography credit: A Mélange Et Moi, "The Shoe in Art, The Shoe as Art," 7 January 2011

© 2013 L. Ryan

Blaise Pascal and Other Stupid People

I don't suppose this is a "real" poem as it recounts the two times I have actually argued with beloved and good-natured friends that I had written poems that I, of course, had not.  For one, they are both short and perfect.  For two, when had I ever shown such acumen or humor?  If you catch me sleepy, I still might argue that I could have written them, if temporal reality had not got in the way.

Blaise Pascal and Other Stupid People

Twice in my life
I became so confused
That I could not remember
If it was my poem

or not.

Once, I struggled to stuff
the recurring mumblemumble of Beatrice Ravenel,
Charleston's girl, branded an occasional
poet, when she really

was mostly not.

She'd written a poem
called Fear  that I so loved
I claimed it, renamed it, though,
a much more à propos Stupid People,

but i wasn't

the poet, no, it really was the mumblemumbled
Ravenel, herself, who penned that acid
brevity, that truth that could straighten the spines
of the scoliosed.

It was not me.

In the other instance of fugitive provenance,
I fought admission with ferocity
(It was so ridiculous!) and tried to make off
with Jacques Prévert's Les paris stupides,

and imagine, still that he'd not

mind at all, but might buy me a café at some
café, and laugh and laugh and laugh.
he knew how the mind can reel
before the shrinking chasm of the original.

Here is Prévert's poem, oh --
and I often confuse Prévert with Brel,
for reasons not worth the fathom --
in its lucious back-handed smack of a kiss:


Les paris stupides:   un certain Blaise Pascal   etc… etc...

You must understand, of course,
that paris is not Paris, that a pari is
a bet, and the Pascal's bet, or Pascal's
wager, has come to cause some of us to snigger.

Pascal said, in loose translation:  ""You must wager;
it is not optional... Let us weigh the gain and the loss
in wagering that God exists...
If you gain, you gain all;

if you lose, you lose nothing.
Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists."
Some sniggered then, more snigger now,
And just as many secretly hope that he is right,

un certain Blaise Pascal, etc... etc...

The thing is, I could have written it,
had time and space allowed, if first writer
didn't have author's dibs. But as for
Ravenel, I shiver

knowing that that poem is so beyond me.

This is what the genteel lady wrote
under the rubrique of one-worded Fear:

I am only afraid 
Of the cold dull lids of eyes,
And the cold dull grain of sand in the soul,
ndurate, insensate, not to be made incandescent
Even by God.
I am afraid of the stupid people.  

All that I know, for sure,
is that I wish I could wield words
like laughing whips, riotous riata,
a sting and a laugh,
a sting and a laugh,
a slap and a deep, deep kiss.

© 2013 L. Ryan

For Dobby (Again)

a repost from last summer. it is never wrong to extol this little guy.  i find him sitting quietly next to me as i do my squirming, spazzing, and screams. he's more helpful than any pharmaceutical; he's pure love, our dobby.

*****   *****   *****

dobby under his brother fuzzbucket's lovingly applied rear naked choke.  dobby is always the wronged one, hence that haunting little star face, pleading for rescue. he remains 90% angel and 10% house elf.

For Dobby

The mucus sac of clammy grey

held you in its strong stone shade,

but who ponders the amniotic tint 

of mirky placenta?

(One is more challenged by its slime than its hue --

except that there was iridescence:

a window in, and a mirror refusing entry,

both; a slick uterine shimmer

repeating reflection's echo

between attraction and repulsion.)

A feral mother's long hairs spun

the moisture of birth into unctuous yarn, 

luxurious snowy strands coated

in melted sanguine maternal mystery,

the all serenaded by mewled complaint

as she gave up on you, the final kitten.

Liquid eyed, she hissed at last, and spat,

glared at us and at life's mess: her first four.

A wriggling membrane, half born, 

flashing nebulae of twirling bright whites,

intimations of very pink punctuation, dotted

outrage, hasty hints of pearlized claws and

anxious padded feet.

He grabbed hold with a ruddy hand muscled with curved strengths 

and gently pulled you from asphyxia, out of oxygen's debt 

and the dark, dank chambers of the queen.

He set the globe of you on my rough teal towel

whose one swift rub broke the holy seal

of the tiny one she'd given up on. 

The stars a forehead, a chest placket. 

The pink whorls a pert nose, perfect ears,

a confusion of paw pads --

but most of you as pearly glaucous 

as the original waxy package.  Tucked 

next a bulging teat, the warmth of dried

and silky siblings, you chose to climb

your mother's head instead --

and perched, drowned rat of a runt,

content, asleep, upon her silken nape, 

blind, cold, and born.

© 2013 L. Ryan

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The Verbal Equivalent of "Crunch" (in poetic form)

The Verbal Equivalent of "Crunch"

I have been abusing
"screaming ninnies," misusing
it to describe my spastic, spasming,
painful periods of dystonia.

I say that I have the "screaming ninnies,"
which makes no sense at all.

Still, it's a habit,
and I'll likely continue to misuse it for lack
of words that feel right,
that encompass the realities of screaming
bloody murder on a cellular level,
my cells' uvulae all a-quiver,
feeling bat-shit nuts,
personifying inanity,
all at the same time:
ka-boom!

You stupid git!
I'm so sick.
Don't roll your goddamn eyes.

You want the pretense:
There is a problem list in play,
and as I work the problem,
solutions will come, the list will end, and voilà,
the problems have been put to rest, put to bed, are gone.

You stupid git!
I'm so sick.
Don't roll your goddamn eyes.

Oh, I am thankful, don't worry.
This poem, or that,
as you know, convert into top-notch
inspirational gratitude
with an at-the-ready daily devotional
doily, or - bate-the-breath -
an honest to goodness antimacassar..

Just pick a poem, any poem, read it, and be glad.
Rejoice, rejoice,
rejoice, I say, in the poem.

While screaming obscenities last evening,
I got tickled,in that Southern way,
in the vernacular of greens and hot sauce.
Giggling, weeping, and yelling,
simultaneously.  (The simultaneity of things
is the rip tide in this, my ocean.)

Curse words are satisfying
but somehow all the seats were pews,
all the books psalters, every top
ten hit a hymn..

So, of course, I called out "shitake mushrooms"
over and over, laughing at such
a honed wit
(because laughter demands
an indirect object).

You stupid git!
I'm so sick.
Don't roll your goddamn eyes.

I can't stop talking when I am this sick.
Or I cannot cease the saying of
the same phrases over and over,
and rarely can I sustain conversation
that doesn't reek of, well, onions.

Oh, all right, desperation. That doesn't reek of desperation.
I'm hungry. I'm so sick,
You stupid git.

Replace "screaming ninnies" and "shitake mushrooms,"
all to lose your goddamn rolling eyes.

When "altered" in intensive care,
I wore the world out with "O, God"
exclamations and "O, Dear God" moans.
The result was one crazy Me
screaming to another crazy Me:
"Shut up! Shut up!
God ain't here right now!"

You stupid, goddamn eye-rolled git,
I am so sick.

Further rumination on ninny would yield little.
then as now.
We should honor, though,
the prominence of the gerund
because this term is, frankly, very
verbal, hyperactive, and
stuck that way, like a gerund.

Yes, exactly.
Like Flaubert's Bovary dancing at the ball,
all in the imperfect.

A waltz, hayseeds in high collar.

The ear must be pleased and satisfied.
There needs to be texture,
the aural and verbal equivalent of *crunch*,
You stupid, stupid git.

PHOTO CREDIT:  SCREAM

This is another conversion of a previous prose piece to poetry (if you deign to accept the label!).  I had hoped that the poetry bug would depart once I left the writing site that kept me sane at the beginning of this year -- but I feel the need returning.  It's sad, as I don't want to abandon this venue, the blog -- but my secret writing desires are, believe it or not, very shy.  And it turns out, ha!  Turns out that I need the camaraderie of my brothers and sisters suffering the same delusion:  We're writers.
© 2013 L. Ryan

Honor the Fred, or else.

Fred tried to make me jealous.  He failed, miserably.          

by glittergirl

Ah, the benefits for spouses, sidekicks, and dear friends of mild short-term memory loss in those we love!

Fred is joyfully planning a coup.  Not a seizure of power, he insists, but more a revolution of celebration. He's always been ill at ease with the word "fun." It ties him in a knot, almost immediately.  You tell Fred, ":Let's have some fun!" and you'll witness facial contortions indicative of pure panic.  But if you work at it, and find some convoluted way to say it, like:  "Let's make today a better day than yesterday!" -- he's with you, he's ready, he has a referent. He almost jumps for... well, not "joy," of course, but perhaps "ascending hopefulness."

So he has volunteered to lead the Service at his place of, well, worship, on 22 December 2013.  He, uh, worships at a Unitarian Universalist affiliated congregation of militant existentialist lesbian feminists.  There has been a decline in the lesbian demographic of this exciting group, and their commitment to existentialism has always been questionable, as a majority of the membership cannot string enough defining words together to form a sentence about the post-World War II philosophy.  Which leaves militant feminists as the predominant ongoing influence.

Hank self-identifies as a Christian.  As far as I know, he's straight -- although he and I, and several friends, used to enjoy allowing others to assume we were, basically, a jaunty gay gang.  I wrote a poem about that, I think, over at AllPoetry, but don't know if I snagged a copy when I left that enterprise.  Let me see.  Be right back...

Damn, that was exciting.  I found a .zip file of my writerly "stuff," many things too personal to find posting here, but that may change according to shifts in courage, should they come.  Anyway, it's long and full of allusion but it does tell the story of our "jaunty gay gang," out to convince people at post-worship Sunday potluck picnics that yes, they did, indeed, know a gay person!  The rumors of invasion are, indeed, real! You're surrounded and we are eating your potato salad!

I'll get back to Fred's current initiative on the other side of the poem and its "Author Note."

"Peasants, Indian Nobles, and the Decline of the Tlaxcalan-Spanish Alliance"

as i write this, the defense of marriage

act seems to be circling the sucking

drain,

whether counter the clock 

or with it, i cannot tell,

though what else will determine the hemisphere?

i read the article behind these poems; fatigue set
in, i circled the drain. actually, it's better said
that i dove right in, sieve bound, no curvature, no wasted motion;

i am that sick of it.
surely there is nothing
left to say, only the abiding strength of what we know?

but i felt this way twenty years ago, as well,
when we were almost always together, all four of us,
at some point in any potato salad, fried catfish 

and slaw gathering: me and fred and ramak and alejandro.
our solution was that, together or apart,
we were all gay -- for the asking.

it was fred's idea, after his gazillionth whispered, crooked
fingered (halting and prepared-to-be-apologetic)
"fred, are you gay?"

he decided to always answer "yes," figuring and theorizing,
hoping and praying that then, at least, that person
would think they knew, at least, one gay person.

he had epidemiological visions of a spreading virus,
shedding little viral progenies, emptying the now vapid host,
having sucked and eaten its innards, free and bounding away

to spread the word: i know someone who is gay; i have a friend
who is gay.  fred hums "imagine" as he sands the frets of his guitars.
pleased, eased, now there were the four of us in the game -- but

back when there were two, when it was just me and fred,
we had the comfort of knowing others knowing
we lived together and seemed suspiciously, knowingly intimate

or, at least, weirdly close, not that we needed or required
or needed or required that knowing knowing at all, at all,
and then there came ramak --

for whom none of it was light as air, pretty as a feather, pithy
as a cold beer teachable moment, but she played.  the obsidian glint in her eye,
however, kept many a potential postulant from leading with the required question.

the butch hair, the soft breasts unbound under thin egyptian cotton tees,
her general cold courtesy, all these kept the question under lock and key
because romy was always romy, what else, who else, could romy be?

so we three hobbled along like monopoly's shoe and hat and iron,
fred and i trying to keep the joy in it, ramak sometimes giving us
the hairy eyeball.  along came alex, part alejandro, half gringo,

and the same with being gay, he first needed to know his audience,
prepare the footlights,  his traveling troupe, his imagined dresser,
but he was not in the closet, no, or if so, not

for the usual pedestrian reasons.  it was more out of castilian courtesy.
but as a game, well, and a game, you say, that we all four would play?
well, that might work, not that i don't cry in fear at night of being alone,

you understand. (and i would secretly hold fred's hand: ramak would either
redo the hairy eye or quickly wipe the hint of a tear at alejandro's crying game.)
"welcoming" church picnics were our specialty, we ate free

but were pale, all four, from the night before, so we lost some of the original
artistry, the courtly dance of far away corners coming together to hold hands
and circle, jauntily, in the middle, by the buffet tables, queens of may.

alejandro was hung over from the peculiarity of tequila one awful sunshiny
sunday morning afternoon, and thus he "snapped" -- his word, worthy of a copper's
tyranny of interrogation under a hot bare bulb -- "i just snapped, damn it,"

said alex, alejandro temporarily in barcelona

(santiago an emergency alternate),

so the four of us piled high our paper plates,

"raised high the roofbeam," 

goose-stepped over to the roots

of an ancient southern oak,

and ate and ate and ate,

til our cheeks pooched out. 

  
we were memorialized on polaroid, and what a tale that photo told, beyond
an apparent feeding frenzy.  i wore a thin jersey top with a hood
of my favorite deepest blue, the hood up, my curls defiantly creeping

out, curls no matter what i put them through. "she was just so freaking stupid,"
whisper wailed alex, stabbing what might have been chicken, but could have been
fish, "and what was there to say but 'so what if i am?' to the mousy-brown

sweet tea idiot, so much my mother i could spit."  aha, ramak nodded to me
and i lent her a bent eyebrow in return.  alex's mother was an unrecognized
but powerful female force in live performances of los reyes the gipsy kings

never introduced, just the spanish chica who carried the trills to the apex in a peasant 
bandanna blouse and blousy skirt, while they sprayed on tans under gold chains
on hairy chests over fat bellies and excluded her from the recording studio

and its royalties.  fred was oblivious to the backstory drama, didn't see his dream
game implode between jellos studded with grapes, watermelon chunks,
frisbee golf and christian volleyball, open to all.

i suggested we switch to vaudeville,

a barbershop quartet:.

fred's bearded hawk-nosed head,

my curly round-cheeked cheery face,

romy's amazingly white teeth

and sultry exoticism --

each popping up,  in harmony,

"i'm gay-y-y" --

 "i'm gay-y-y" --

 "i'm gay-y-y" --

and then an extended

holding of the line,

with jazz hands twitching

as a waving, jerky alex

hops up behind, 

boater waving, starting us all

in a slow,

flat-crowned

chorus kick,

leading a rafter rattling

(whether rafter or no)

speed increasing, voltage volting,

(Milyen volt az előadás? How was the show?)

flabbergasting

"so.  what.  if.  i.  am...

so.  what.  if.  i.  am...

o mama!  

o papa!

so.  what.  if.  i.  am...  

i'm gay!"

what really happened is that fred's dream was killed by the obvious:
a straight couple with twisted liberal tendencies,
and guilt (the woman in love with ramak,

but not gay), and alex keeping two journals,
one a  homosexual compendium of erotica that could
make a person weep, the other private password-

protected files in a folder marked "Peasants, Indian Nobles,
and the Decline of the Tlaxcalan-Spanish Alliance" on his mac.
our plan to have everyone in the world know at least one gay person

failed, failed even if we deflated the world to continents,
those continents to a country, that country to a region,
that region into little tiny counties, with towns of plastic 

red and green monopoly houses, motels, hotels,  
and b&b accomodations, monopoly's shoe, hat,
iron, and thimble jive dancing in the corner establishment saturday

nights before sunday picnics,
arguing why a gay bar cannot be a jazz club.
who to tell -- and how to tell -- the difference.

Author notes

A contest entry for: Nobody's Gay by T.H. 

This poem's title is taken from a Grinnell College Latin American Studies research paper written by Eliot Spencer in 2005, a Senior Paper requirement for certification in Latin American Studies.

It tickles me that people want to see the picture under the tree.  I am a poet, or trying. It does exist, but without Alex.  I'm staring at one of the huge tree roots, Fred is staring at me, and Ramak is glaring at the woman taking the picture -- who was in (very unrequited) love with her. Alejandro would never, ever play the game and was, at this period, I believe, having mooched all of us to death, mooching his way around South America, Spain, and Portugal.  Ramak telegraphed so well that even her willingness to play was pointless, plus she was always the same to all she met that... well, Romy was just above it all.  

So it was just me and Fred, really.  That's what I get for writing narrative stuff, I suppose, and making it plausible.

All I know is that the plausible picture of the four of us, the game, itself, driven by "welcoming" Christians and their curiosity, was all about wanting to be loved, wanting to love, and desperately needing to be able to relax into the truth and just chow down on free fried food.  We simply found a way to so structure our discomfort that we could pretend the strictures of hate, prejudice, and damnation did not exist.

Really, I should call these posts "performance art," though to call this "art" is an aggrandizement. It is such an accurate representation of the flightiness of my poor brain...

So... before that terrible poetic interlude, I was telling you about Fred's Christianity.  It emerges most often when he's hurt by some change among his friends at the existentialist congregation -- he clothes his concern and pain in feisty battle readiness, in condemning their condemnation of organized religions, especially Christianity.  

Basically, the congregation, about 30 years old now, has historically been made up of people marginalized by organized religious groups, sometimes in childhood, sometimes in young adulthood and on occasions such as coming out as gay, lesbian, or transgender.  Their faith, they say, went the way of their trust and love of the institutions that had sworn them an allegiance of support, guidance, and acceptance.  Not always, but often, the end result is a stunted thought process and a continual aggravation of wounds that never healed.

Fred says it was not always like this, not always this bitter, repulsed response to notions large and small, from stringent anti-Christian stances to degradation of men, because men are behind every bad thing that has ever occurred in human history.  Yes, the anti-male hysteria is real, and yes, I do characterize it as a "small" notion.  The men in the group are among the most liberally compassionate, pacifist, and open-minded guys you'll ever meet -- and the militant existentialist lesbian feminists all know it.  They'll even admit it in the span of a lightening strike.

Fred wields Christianity as a bat to hit the high-powered, stinging pitches that are hurled toward his strike zone, by which I mean that he is hurt and using ideology to fight back.

Hmm.  Do you hear bells ringing?

There used to be a solid core of existential philosophy study going on there, and, odd as it may sound, that study was full of fun.  Gatherings were fun, even if sometimes necessarily "deep." Now?  Existentialism is being not-so-gently shoved off the altar, left undiscussed, considered arcane -- and most members couldn't provide the sketchiest sketch of its history, meaning, or significance.

The happiness of the place (it is, after all, where I met Fred) hinged on fun, on a miraculous conjunction of existential ideas and theories for action with the lives that congregated around them.

Fred now often leaves for the 11 am service at 11:25 am.  He also sometimes goes early for a meeting or out of excitement for a scheduled speaker and ends up home at 11:15 am.  He comes home pale and sweaty, sad and angry.

He was born on Christmas Day, was Fred.  Raised in the Catholic Church, educated by nuns, he got over that abuse with the help of single malt scotches and beautiful women in Ethiopia.  He experimented with naturalism as a faith, and considered himself a modern druid for a bit.  The way he sometimes eyes certain trees, I suspect he still might.  But for several years now, he speaks with more and more respect of Christianity.

There's not a bit of evangelical fervor flying around backward in our suites here in The Manor, nor have we held Wednesday night Bible Studies (though I LOVE Bible Studies!).  Sometimes I insult Fred, hopefully without it showing, by thinking that this new faith-based man must be punking my ass.  Other times, I wish he would allow me into that precious space in his heart.

I started by saying Fred was trying to evoke my jealousy.  Little does he know that he does that every day, but we won't go down Self Pity Alley on this journey.  He got up early, as in well before noon, and as he handed me a wonderful jug of coffee, chirped "I have a lunch date." Then he stood up and grinned at me, feeling all superior and stuff.  This as I pictured the leftovers that I am counting on him (and Sven, and Bianca, and the Cabana Boy) to dispose of, while trying to appear unconcerned, and definitely not jealous.
He'd already told me about his plans over the weekend, but forgot -- so, ha!  I don't mind finishing off the incredible and perfectly spiced Spanish Omelet, complemented by a side of superior vegetarian chili.

The luncheon today is dedicated to a small group of revolutionaries plotting the goings-on for the upcoming pre-Christmas service on 22 December.  They are planning... a fun celebration of Christmas, free from any heavy wrapping in ideology, desire for conversion, or even contemplation of the lunacy of a Virgin Birth. This is more about a Jesus child, touched by God, running around nekkid as a jay bird and rejoicing in life lived well, finding the space and the spirit to befriend the frowning and judgmental, to soothe the injured.

A tree, small presents, maybe even a living tableau.  Jingle-Bells by the Ukulele Band.  Themes of love and hope, peace and good acts.  Sugar cookies.

That's my Fred.

He is excited but also, like me, tending toward "borrowing trouble." What if people refuse to come?  What if someone tries to openly denigrate Christmas?  What if he will be required to deliver a cogent thesis to explain Christianity itself?  (This is not a crazy worry.  The congregants are a hyper-educated bunch, full of professors and degreed fine arts practitioners 'n such.)

My job, I've decided, is to try and correct the course should the Christmas Celebration Cruise Ship veer from following the twinkling star.

But they'd better get with the program, those militant existentialist lesbian feminists or I won't be sending along any more savory tarts or rich mushroom polentas to those famed Wednesday night suppers and ukulele band practices.

Honor the Fred, or else.  A new commandment.

© 2013 L. Ryan

the email story of five poems

the email story of five poems

originally "composed" on Feb 10 2013.  forgotten.  dug up a few minutes ago.

PART ONE:
I have two brothers.

One left our family (he was the intelligent child) when I was about eight.  It might be said that the family, in whole and in parts, left him.  We found each other three or four years ago, and it's been a hesitant love fest ever since. (He gives good phone. He's funny. Kind. Wary. A friend to the Earth, a spiritualist. A good'un.)

The other is an English professor, also positively brilliant, and with whom I've enjoyed an uninterrupted lifelong love fest.  I love him, not for his brilliance or his own impressive feats, but for his compassionate soul. He may curse at his students and drop the F-bomb in class, but he labors over what his writers write with a care that would make them weep.  (I threw chalk at sleeping students, or even wide-awake ones, and graded very rapidly.)

The two of them, who love one another in a way I cannot describe, do not speak, do not commune in any way.  For all those missing years, the professor has felt the pain of being left behind, the pain of brother love and a brother believed dead.  And now he will not relent to communicate, will not call, type, lift a pen.
Though youngest, I have always been the muddled middle.  Not your usual peacemaker, no. I've cursed both the naturalist and the bookish boy grown old.  In the beginning, a beginning of just three (or four) years ago, please hold in mind, I would occasionally try to trick them.  That never worked, because as youngest, I am, perforce, the dumbest.

So now I've taken to writing them both emails, blind-copying them both and letting them know so.  The canyon trekker is an accomplished poet and writer, and, well, what can you say of an English professor? (I'll pretend I did not hear you think that.)  I got tired of composing emails that expressed the same thing except for their separated minutiae.

Since I've recently become active at a neighboring joint dedicated to poetry, I fired off one of these double-blinded emails, begging my brothers for help.

PART TWO:
This is how my email went:
i'm trying to make certain dead areas of my brain surge back to life, or at least elicit some sort of neuro-spark, and one of the ways i've chosen is poetry, the reading, writing, and critique of it.   pretty much the moment i discovered george oppen ("i discovered george oppen," chuckle), i stopped reading anything new.   would you recommend some "new" poetry?  maybe regional, maybe obnoxious, marginal, or so popular that one'd be tempted to snub her just because?  just please don't list anyone rising from the detritus of vanity presses (i am struggling to get over a recent encounter with such a poet who used me to beat upon, i assume because he does not know me.  i had entered his "round robin poetry contest" without doing due diligence into his overwhelming dickhood, his quintessential dickiness.  he punished my questioning of just what constituted a "round robin" poetry contest, once the arbitrary nat! ure of the rules began to slowly seep, like used motor oil, from his dickified mouth.  for the first "round," the 25 entrants were surprised to discover that we were to vote for our "top ten." i defended a man who, without any doubt, wrote the best poem but dared to ask if we might vote for ourselves... anyway, it got ugly, and i ended up making unavoidable references to the rampant spread of "the browning of the nose" among the broader contestentry.  both the very nice, best poet and i were promptly eliminated, despite both receiving mostly "votes" of between #1 and #10.   i am -- what is the word? oh yeah, i am all broken up.  bereft.  désolée.   but the fun is reading new poetry by people unknown to me, most of it god-awful (and you know how awful god can be!) but some of it embedded with those moments, though with all of us what's constant is our inconstancy.     so in the 20 years since i've seriously read poetry, what have i missed, what should i rea d?  not looking to emulate, no, as i said, i'm looking to shock brain parts back to life.   everything in me wants to run back to ronsard & du bellay, sweet l'il louise labé or even la chanson de roland.  villon! the draw of mallarmé... and lamartine as much as baudelaire. weirdly, you now couldn't pay me to read huysmans but i'd pay you for the ability to concentrate for an hour on georges bataille or blanchot. people change -- who knew?   i've not read near enough of h.d., stein, WCW, pound.  whitman.  dickinson. stevens, lowell. wilbur.   oppen, oppen, oppen.   so, five poems i ask of you.  that's all -- five measly poems.   oh -- the other part of my attack upon cognitive decline:  mahjong solitaire.   i know you are busy earning the money required to live, as well as pursuing life, liberty, and happiness -- so please take your time.  i'm feeling confused a lot, and there's familiar evidence -- the way i keep (do not keep) my checkbook, the drying of clothes before they're clean, these familiar markers.  little, very little, sleep.  too many medications, though we've cut as many as seem prudent.     maybe prudence is over-rated, maybe we are fools to think ourselves prudent.  i dunno.     sorry to always be desperate, but i am. it's no fun being alive. poetry might help, or at least obfuscate things enough that i'll forget the silliness of expecting fun at all.   i love you so deeply, respect you so deeply --
moi

PART THREE:
I had serious doubts that this story -- well, not a story, more of a profound historical record of the sort people used to bury in cardboard boxes kept in unventilated attics, or in the corners of damp unfinished basements, back when people could afford homes -- would develop a third section.

So it is with joy that I transcribe, changing only what must be changed to protect myself, the flurry of emails between myself and the brother-unit who professes English.  His first volley shocked me, for he has been the source of many gifts of poetry over the years.  Now that I press my leaking sieve of a memory, however, I remember that he usually chose his gifts with precision from a list that I provided.

You see, we were both the confused recipients of strange offerings from an unrelated great-step-aunt, a very wealthy aunt who married as an old woman the publisher of a group of major southern newspapers.  Sara, herself, was a hoot, a ringer for Aunt Clara of Bewitched, and so, of course, she outlived her filthily-lucred one-man dynasty of a husband., and dedicated herself to the preservation of his capital.  She closed off the upper two stories of their mansion, and most of the first floor, too -- because who needs three kitchens?  We loved her for herself, for her insistence on stopping at every street corner, no matter the existence of a stop light or stop sign.  We enjoyed traveling through three lanes of oncoming traffic as the best way to enter McDonald's by its clearly marked exit.  I often slept on a plush and ratty chaise longue in the anteroom to her boudoir in the mansion because she was scared at night.  I was scared at night, too, because every bit of every wall was covered by gilded frames holding the dead, posed faces of rich strangers.

Her kin folk, again, all step-kinfolk, but lovely people, both hungered to inherit her money and also loved her a lot and took good care of her (like sending me over to sleep on the plush and ratty chaise longue to stare at the dead, posed faces of rich strangers all night).

My point, clearly, is that she gave us strange gifts.  I remember a Christmas gift wrapped in official Belk's paper, nestled in crisply folded tissue paper, with Belk-approved ribbonry.  The treasure at its heart?  A plastic comb, complete with a sample hair, and a pair of stained, pastel pink underpants, about 20 sizes too large.

So the professor and I became strict list adherents.  It seemed the safest way to celebrate the birth of Christ and our own trips around the sun in a world of such biohazards.

The train of my thought?  The train of my thought?  Oh, yes.  My request for 5 measly poems. Although the first to reply, my F-bombing Classroom Leader led with an effort to evade:

Howdy-- I have to chuckle at your request for poetry recommendations. I stopped reading poetry in grad school and my only exposure since has been to whatever is included in those 2,000 page anthologies that departments make the students buy for 1102. I realized I'd not be reading any more poetry in 1990 when I bought my first CD and couldn't read the liner notes or the lyrics! Had to chuckle at your idea of putting the painting on the piano--tres chic. Any concert recommendations from Wolfgang's Vaults? Love to thee and thine.

A few words of clarification.  Our father died last July, and since then there has been an insurgence of little clown cars spewing forth relatives we never knew we had.  One was my father's brother, who recently shocked us with the revelation that he had held in trust, for almost 50 years, an oil painting of our mother, commissioned by the aforementioned dead father, and delivered to our uncle upon the occasion of our father's remarriage.  Most men, my brother and I agree, would have chucked the thing in the nearest dumpster.  Well, someone had to say "oh-yes-that-is-something-I-cannot-imagine-living-without" and we all knew that someone had to be me.  So we've joshed a bit about how outright freaky it would be to hang it over our recently acquired scuffed up, duct-taped upright piano.  (As it turned out, it was a beautiful portrait and I sent it to her daughter to return to her.)

And if you are unfamiliar with Wolfgang's Vaults, well, look it up -- a very cool site for those of us who may still have vinyl stashed in blue plastic milk cartons, and who, while no longer being able to afford concerts, adore the sound of live music.  (I neglected to tell you that my other beloved brother-unit was a bona fide Dead Head, having followed the band and made superb recordings of beaucoup concerts.  His silence in the face of my 5 Poem Demand is not surprising, as he takes things very seriously, or not at all.  His life, after all, has been "a long strange trip..."  Also, as eldest, he's perforce smartest.  But we've covered that, already.)

You can see the Deflective Tactics hard at work chez the Professor.  Who would believe that a former undergrad who drooled when given the chance to be in the same room as the earliest known transcription ofBeowulf would walk away from poetry based on sucky lyrics and worse liner notes?

And so I responded in bull-by-the-horns fashion:
On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 4:54 PM, The Professor @juno.com> wrote:
"Any concert recommendations from Wolfgang's Vaults?" 

not until you name a poem.

I may have been youngest but you can only play coy for so many decades, you know?  No longer do I play far, far right field ("a little farther, a little farther, and behind the fence would be best!") or when Seeker in Hide and Seek, discover that the brothers left for town hours ago....

He knew there'd be no value in making me cool my heels, so I received this seven minutes later:

Alright, but the only poems I can recall always start with "There once was a man from Nantucket..." So we have a standoff then! (I wish I had something short and pithy, almost poetic, to say...)

I went to bed with smug thoughts of progress, much as I used to think each year, on my birthday, that I was catching up in age to these reprobate siblings of mine.  Surely, one poem at least was within my grasp!
A mere four hours ago, I found this vibrating in my email box:

Poetry in motion--take a look on the Rolling Stone web site at the video clip of Queen performing at Live Aid. A rousing 25 minutes. I'd never seen that before. (Poetry in motion with mass adulation--just the sort of set up Dickinson was after! Not.) Never was a fan of the band but that was quite the "poetic" set. (Note how often I'm trying to fool you with the constant repetition.) 

Okay, I admit to feeling on the losing side of a subtly waged war of attrition.   I do think, however, that with the aid of near Silent Treatment, that while he may not give me the recommendation of a single poem, I may unnerve him just enough that he might write one.

PART FOUR:
[This story will conclude once I've received a sage response from the other Brother-Unit, who may be feeling tapped out, as his last gift box to me contained the complete works of e. e. cummings along with huge bags of homegrown and dried organic jalapeños and habaneros, sunny tomatoes, squash, and green peppers.  Never has poetry been so sweetly scented.  This dear gardening pilgrim, I hope I've mentioned, is a poet.  That means extra cunning.  Also inevitable self-deprecation.  He's a good'un, I say again.]


© 2013 L. Ryan